


Down With The Sickness

by dancinbutterfly



Series: Jesse Manes Is a Humans Rights Violation [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Comfort/Angst, Confessions, Enemies to Friends, Ethics, Family Issues, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guilt, Honesty, Jesse Manes A+ Parenting, Kyle Valenti Speaks Spanish, Kyle Valenti is a Good Person, Loss, Lost Love, M/M, Medical Professionals, Men Crying, Michael Guerin is Missing, Missing Persons, Post-Loss, Prequel, Responsibility, School Reunion, Self-Reflection, no betas we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-20
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-16 09:51:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18518998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancinbutterfly/pseuds/dancinbutterfly
Summary: Damnit, Kyle's a doctor, not a secret agent. He never watched Star Trek or Battlestar Five or any of that sci-fi shit. Hell, he spent the first half of Guardians of the Galaxy giving a cute theater major he met in a welding elective oral and she dragged him out early to bone in his SUV so he never saw the end. So, he doesn't really know what the fuck he's doing with this whole alien prisoner mess. He just knows he has to do something to get Michael Guerin away from Jesse Manes.





	1. Having Some Trouble In Dealing With These Changes

**Author's Note:**

> I am a huge fan of Kyle Valenti you guys and in this series in particular he is a flawed, fallible fucking star. Here's hoping the season finale doesn't fuck him up beyond redemption, yeah? 
> 
> Thanks to littlecountrymouse and shenanigans for the handholding and litereally every single person who left a comment or reblogged this. Yall are why I'm still writing in this verse. 
> 
> Warning in end notes to avoid spoilers.

Kyle didn't sign up for any of this cloak and dagger, alien Edmund Dantes bullshit. He's was just trying to have some no-strings sex with his ex and now suddenly he's fallen hip-deep in a fucking conspiracy in an actual, honest-to-god underground conspiracy bunker where his dad's old drinking buddy is holding their declared-dead apparently-extraterrestrial high school salutatorian hostage while he awaits examination (by Kyle, what the shit) in the biggest ethics violation he's ever had the poor fortune of encountering in his short but storied medical career. 

And he still has to be at work by seven tomorrow morning. Seriously, fuck his life.

He should call in sick. He should call 911. He should drive straight to the hospital and head straight upstairs to psych and have a mental health assessment done to make sure the whole thing isn't just a massive, ongoing audio-visual hallucination. His dad had them at the end, seeing things that weren't there, talking to voices that only he could hear. Roswell's not a large town but it's big enough to get a few regular indigent clients whose schizoaffective disorders cause similar symptoms. He wonders if they're as sure their delusions are happening as he is that this whole situation with Liz Ortecho and Jesse Manes and Michael goddamn Guerin are really, actually real.

In the end, all Kyle does is drive to his damn ten year reunion like he originally planned before his life became a B sci-fi movie and commits to talking to Liz tomorrow about what to do about the whole liberating Prisoner 2460Guerin situation. He is a successful doctor and a decent human being who is gonna risk his whole life to do the right fucking thing as soon as is feasible and if he can’t rub that in peoples faces tonight, what memories are he going to have to hold onto when he’s being waterboarded in Camp X-Ray for betraying Project Shepherd? Learning to ride a bike? Please.

A solid half the cheerleaders are still sexy, some of the debate club and scary theater girls grew up hot and his MD has mileage. Kyle hasn’t gotten this many phone numbers since his he was an usher in his college roommate wedding two years ago and he was rocking a tux that night. Apparently, the come down from raw, unadulterated horror smells good on him. Who knew?

He’s got Tess Harding in the palm of his hand, twirling a long blond curl around her index finger, looking at his mouth and down for some much needed hand stuff under the bleachers for nostalgia’s sake, when he finally notices Alex. He actually notices Liz, because he always notices her, she’s beautiful and he was literally under her not too long ago, and she is still his best friend in this town. He doesn’t realize it’s Alex at first, he’s just a hunched over body that Liz is running her hand over his shoulders in a soothing gesture that reminds Kyle of his mom. It’s not until he straightens and turns to wave her off that Kyle recognizes him. He sick the moment he does because of course, _of course_ , he’s in front of a larger than life picture of Michael Guerin. He watches, Tess already half forgotten for all that she’s still right in front of him, as Alex shoos Liz into Max Evans waiting arms. As soon as she’s gone, Alex goes back to staring up at Guerin. 

He’s been there all night, Kyle realizes. 

Fuck. 

_Fuck._

“Tess, I gotta go take care of something.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer. It’s rude and means he’ll probably never get to fuck her but he’s already made enough mistakes where Alex is concerned to last a lifetime. He’s not making any more if he can help it.

The thing is, Kyle knew Alex was gay probably before anyone else. They grew up with the internet and he wasn’t stupid. Alex didn’t get excited by the porn they managed to dig up around the parental controls and he didn’t talk about any of the girls in their class even when they slid him notes and he never looked at the boobs of women around them when he had the chance. He just wasn’t like Kyle. Kyle hadn’t wanted to care about that but the way his friends on the football team talked about cocksuckers and queers made it hard not to mind that Alex was so obviously gay and then impossible and then he was the one saying those things to the person he’d once been able to trust more than anyone but his mom and then it was too late to backtrack because how did you say sorry when doing that would make people think you were gay too? In high school, he hadn’t been able to think of one, and the prospect of doing it anyway had been too much for him to handle because he'd been a sad fucking coward.

He’s had people die under his hands, and he remembers every one of them, but that cowardice is what haunts him. He can rationalize lives lost as just part of his job, his best efforts getting given and nature taking its course. He doesn’t have that luxury with Alex. He was just cruel because he was scared and stupid and there was no excuse. He didn’t know what he need to do to be the kind of person he wanted to be back then. By the time he realized how little the guys on the team mattered, how unimportant what small minds thought between someone like Alex, who would have gone to the wire for him, and that he didn’t care if people _did_ think he was gay, because, Jesus, there wasn’t anything wrong with liking guys or girls or both nor neither, or fuck, and he never actually thought there was so much as he’d just wanted to be liked, it was way too late. He was in Michigan and Alex was in the Air Force and their lives were too far apart for him to fix. 

He’s smarter now, or a little wiser at least. He can see the truth when it’s right in front of him. It’s obvious that Jesse Manes had more than one reason to target Guerin and wow, isn’t that an amazing extra layer of fucked up.

He doesn’t say anything when he approaches Alex. He’s earned too much ill will to have the right. But Alex seems to sense a presence and some sighs. 

“Police still haven’t found him. No trace, no dried out bones in a mine shaft, nothing. It’s so fucked up. He lives in this awful box in my head with Schrödinger’s cat, alive and dead at the same time, forever, until someone finds his body.”

Jesus, okay. Kyle doesn’t know what he was expecting but it wasn’t that.

“You’re supposed to move on. People tell you to move on but how the hell am I supposed to move on from this? I can still hear his songs in my head, like this echo that never goes away, but I never got to find out where he learned to play like that. More things I don’t ever get to know.”

“Alex, man, I don’t-“

“It’s bullshit. This is bullshit. People are not supposed to get the love of their lives at seventeen and then have them go MIA. That’s not how things are supposed to go.” He tips his head back and up at Guerin’s laughing face. “You ruined me for anyone else, you bastard. I can’t fit with anyone else.”

Oh, shit, he’s crying. Kyle is used to patients crying but those are patients. At work. There’s a professional boundary there. This is Alex. He doesn’t actually know what to do with this.

Kyle’s able to stand watching Alex do the stoic manly tears bit for all of fifteen seconds before he figures screw it. Alex has hated him for fifteen years because he was an asshole, what’s one more thing on top of all that? He tells himself that this is going to be worth it in the end, when they gets to an end, and walks around to crouch in front of Alex, directly in his line of sight. 

Alex flinches at the sight of him, which, ouch. Okay. He probably deserves that but it doesn’t deter him. “Hey, man, maybe we should go for a walk.”

It is an insensitive dick thing to say to a guy who got his leg blown off in Iraq but Alex know him best as insensitive dick. They function well along those parameters. They haven’t been civil with each other since before Youtube was invented anyway, so whatever. 

Alex looks at him with wet, angry eyes and communicates with his glare what a douchebag he’s being which is fair. But now that Kyle’s looking directly into his flushed face and red eyes, he can see that Alex is drunk, has been for awhile, and he really will be sorry later if the whole town sees him weepy wasted. Well. More of the town.

“Fuck you, Kyle. I wasn’t talking to you.”

“No, you were talking to yourself, which is so much worse. Come on, dude, you can talk to me about Guerin all you want. I’m all ears but not like this. This is…this isn’t what you want.”

“What I want doesn’t matter.” He looks down into his glass like it’s got those answers he’s been looking for. He’s a picture of tragedy, big, hopeless eyes a mirror of Michael’s big hopeless eyes earlier. “It never mattered.”

Kyle winces. Alex doesn’t know what he knows. No one does. No one but Jesse Manes who doesn’t consider Michael enough of a person to have any compassion for what ten years in isolation does to a person and doesn’t give a single shit about what losing the first person he ever loved with no explanation and a million questions has done to his son. 

He thinks about where he left Michael, handcuffed and manacled at the ankles above bare feet, his skin so pale he could rival some corpses because for ten years he’s been held underground and had god knows what done to him. Yet Michael still had enough reserve and patience to comfort him before he drew blood and did a cursory check-up. And all Kyle could manage in return was this? God, he’s a piece of shit. 

Fuck. Motherfucking fuck. He’s not going to work tomorrow. He’s not doing anything but figuring out a way to get Michael out of Project Shepherd. And for that, he’s going to need Alex in one piece. 

“Hey, do you really think he’d want you to fuck yourself up like this in front of everybody?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t really do that much talking.”

Okay then. 

“My guess is no. Come on. Get up.” 

Kyle actually _does_ know that you don’t put your hands on someone in visible distress without there express permission. That’s Trauma Informed Care 101 and he knows what he’s looking at with Alex. Unfortunately, he doesn’t really know what else to do and to be honest, he’s ready to take a punch from Alex if he’s in the mood to throw it. He knows he’s due at least a half dozen or so clean hits to the mouth for all the vile homophobic shit he said and did in high school, although he’s not excited about receiving them or anything. So he reaches out and puts a hand on Alex’s arm to pull him up.

He’s shocked that all he gets is shrugged off when Alex stands. He really was expecting a punch in the face. 

“Let me take you home.”

“Why? You wanna fuck me, Valenti? Because you closed that door when you called me a faggot for the nine-hundredth time at prom. Before that maybe I’d have sucked you off if I was really wasted and every other guy on the planet was dead.”

Kyle doesn’t flinch because years of residency with angry patients have given him a thick skin but it stings enough for him to make him pause. He takes a long, deep breath before he speaks. He needs to get this right, has to, for Alex’s own sake but also for Michael who is waiting for someone to help him the way he can’t help himself. If he can thread a needle and cauterize a vein, he can respond to Alex Manes’ throwing things he actually did back in his face without turning back into a shitty, mean child. He can. He will. 

“Alex,” he says, carefully, with intent, “you’re drunk and you’re sad and I don’t want you to make things worse for yourself. Let me get you home, man. Please?”

Alex freezes and stares at him, then he laughs jaggedly. “Holy shit. You actually grew up.”

Kyle sighs. “Yeah, well, I’m trying to.”

They get settled in his car before he realizes Kyle has no idea where Alex is staying. He’s been back in town for weeks and they haven’t had a conversation. No one tells him shit about Alex because everyone who knew them before remembers what a son of a bitch he was back in school and is rightly protecting Alex, from him. Damnit. 

He drags his phone out of his pocket and pulls up Waze and frowns at the smiling, white car-bubble icon that is clearly deaf to his suffering.

“What address are you staying at now?”

Alex stares out the window and doesn’t look at him when he says, “You don’t need that.”

“Yeah, I do. I only know the streets around the school and there’s been a decade of light changes and new developments and if you’re anywhere near RIAC then I’m pretty screwed. I’m not trusting drunk turn-by-turn directions so just-“

“Your dad left me the cabin.” Alex just throws out because yeah, whatever, Kyle didn’t need any aspect of his life to have stability today. First aliens are real and dead men are risen, now his dad is giving the location where they had some of the few good, sober memories to the person who hates Kyle the most and will definitely not let him visit it, ever. 

Yeah, this fine. He’s absolutely okay with the current situation.

“Right. Guess I don’t.”

Alex grunts and Kyle sighs and starts the car. He hasn’t driven out there since college but he knows the way cold. He digs through his Spotify before he pulls out and hits up a playlist of shit from middle school that sounds as fucked up as he feels and hits play as he tears out of the parking lot and out into the night. 

They get about halfway there when Alex finally starts sobering up enough to give him shit.

“God, I hate this song. What the hell are we even listening to?”

“Excuse you,” Kyle sniffs, “This is classic.”

"Is this Disturbed? I didn't think you went in for screamo goth rock." 

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Alex gaping at him. “Yes, Mr. I-Pierced-My-Own-Nose-And-Blew-My-Allowance-On-Black-Everything-In-High-School, it is.” He fights the urge to stick his tongue out at him. “And I introduced you to them, and Marilyn Manson, and Slipknot, and TOOL, and a dozen other bands I know you hitchhiked in to Albuquerque with Liz and Maria to see without me, remember?” 

Jesse had kept a firm leash on everything Alex did and he’d had to fight with older brothers who got off on hassling him for access to everything from the TV to CD players to the one family computer. Kyle, on the other hand, had been doted on by Alex’s older brothers. They’d given him access to their cool middle and high school worlds that Alex was otherwise locked out of and at home, he was free to hours downloading songs he found on Myspace and Limewire to burning CDs for himself and Alex so that he’d have someone to talk to about everything he stumbled across that made the hair on his arms stand up. Alex was better with music than he was. He could actually play it where Kyle could only listen but it was something they always had to talk about. They’d been little kids, fifth graders, probably too young for the content he knows now, when he tripped and fell into metal and practically fell in his rush to share it with his best friend. It seemed like a good place to start over.

Instead, it just earns him a bitter laugh. “You are absolutely unbelievable.”

“What?” 

He pulls his eyes off the empty highway long enough to see Alex shake his head at him. 

“Nothing. I just can’t believe you’re mad at me for doing things without you when you were actively terrorizing me.”

Kyle sags as David Draiman makes howler monkey noises over his stereo. He feels like he’s being yelled at. He feels like he deserves it. He clicks forward because he's working on not being a dick and Alex did say he didn't like the song. The playlist transitions straight into the aforementioned Marilyn Manson, of course, because if they’re going to dig into this, might as well go hard on the queer themes for their soundtrack, right? Yeah. Right.

He takes a deep breath, holds it to the slow, dragging pulse of the Golden Age of Grotesque chorus for a few beats because that feels like an appropriate punishment before he lets them out in a rush of sincerity. “I’m sorry.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said I’m sorry.” Wow. It’s easier the second time. Huh. Kyle thought it’d be harder. It’s also on the tip of his tongue to prevaricate, to flat out lie about what turned him into such a nightmare bully but that was before tonight, when Michael Guerin looked at him with eyes that begged for help and he watched Alex’s grief hollow him out in like a pumpkin rind, deceptively bright and cheerful and so easily broken. “For everything. I don’t really have anything else to say, dude, but I’m trying.”

He can feel Alex’s eyes on him and he just waits, strung out and tight. He doesn’t want to care if he’s forgiven or not but he does. He cares so much. He doesn’t know that he ever found any other friends like Alex after he pushed him away. He’s going to do what he does next for Michael because he took an oath and he lives by it, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t doing it for Alex to, try and make some kind of amends for dealing so much pain by giving him something good back too.

“I can see that.”

That’s not forgiveness, not by a long shot but it’s something. It’s a place to start. Kyle can work with that. 

“Yeah. It’s kinda shit.”

“Only kinda?”

“I mean, there’s a lot of fucking up involved. There’s no map.”

“Don’t be an asshole. Start there.”

“I told you. I’m trying.”

They don’t talk the rest of the way. The music kind of fills the space between them and they just let it. Every track makes him feel like he’s in middle school again only everything is broken, asynchronous because Alex isn’t giving a running commentary on chord progression and the meaning behind the lyrics and full biographies on the bands. He knows he did this and he hates it but he’s going to get Alex inside and settled so that he can handle this as best he can and deal with the rest of this shit later. The next right thing, that’s the only thing he knows how to do.

Alex isn’t so drunk that he can’t’ get himself inside and he’s not so angry that he begrudges Kyle his concern. They don’t talk as Kyle settles on the couch with his phone. He just stands for a minute, weight leaned heavily on his crutch, staring at him like he’s not sure what he’s doing there even though this place is somewhere Kyle spent far more time in Alex did before he moved in. 

He’s drafts and deletes three different texts to Liz before he cracks and looks up. “What?”

“Are you just going to sit there?”

Kyle shrugs. “I am for now, yeah. I’ve got some stuff I’ve gotta handle later but, you’re going to be feeling this tomorrow.”

“I can handle it.”

Kyle nods but doesn’t move.

“So you can go.”

“I want to talk when you’re sober.”

“So I’ll text you.”

“Nah. I can wait. It’s fine.” Michael Guerin’s chained ankles and bare feet are haunting him. He doesn’t want to go back to his single apartment and the nightmares he’ll have to face there. This better for him too.

“You grew up weird, Valenti.”

“I’m gonna take that as a compliment.”

“You go ahead and do that.” The strange slanted crease above his right eye deepens as Alex stares down at him, confused. “Are you staying?”

“Yeah. Too late to drive home.”

“Is it?”

“I don’t know, but it feels like it. It’s been a day and I’ve got something I want to talk to you about when you’re sober.” 

Alex shrugs. “We can talk now.”

Kyle shakes his head. “No. We really can’t.”

He watches as Alex’s hackles raise. “Listen, I don’t know what you think I’m going to do but-“

“I need til morning to think, okay?” He tries because it has the benefit of being true. “I can’t right now.” That is also true. He doesn’t know how Alex will react sober and he really wants to talk to Liz first and there’s just too much in his head right now. Fuck. “There’s too much right now and I have to think about what I’m doing, what I’m going to say. So just, let’s sleep okay?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Hopefully. I’m trying for tomorrow.”

Alex doesn’t like that answer but it’s all he’s got to give. Shit. Fucking fucking shit. He texts Liz with the address of the cabin and a few more emoticons than is probably reasonable and asks her to meet him.

She says she can come by before her shift tomorrow which is good. He’s going to need her to help him convince Alex that he’s not lying or crazy or both. He probably still trusts her. Hopefully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes 
>   * I’m not going deep into what Kyle did to Alex in high school in this story. I don’t think it’s necessary. But I am spending a lot of time on themes of regret, guilt, and the issue of his bullying is addressed from the prespective of Kyle as a former bully quite a bit. 
>   * I headcanon that Michael was at the top of his class but not quite perfect hence salutatorian rather than valedictorian. 
>   * But wow we fucking called it on Jesse Manes snatching aliens up and holding them for years without due process and torturing them for "science", didn't we, team? 
>   * For those of you who weren't forced to read this book in high school, Edmund Dantes is the protagonist of Count of Monte Cristo and was imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit for something like 15 years.
>   * Camp X-Ray was in place at Guantanamo Bay before a permanent detention camp was put in place but it's the most famous and what most people would know of because of pop culture.
>   * Limewire is software that came after Napster and we stole the shit out of music with it. It riddled computers with viruses and it was great.
>   * Tess Harding was the 4th alien in OG Rowell and the character was a shit part played brilliantly be Emilie de Raven so this is my way to give hers shout out knowing what we know.
>   * So, I work in mental health and audio-visual hallucinations are not the same thing as delusions. AVHs are seeing and hearing things that other people do not. Delusions are often conceptual and are more abstract - the conviction that sexy aliens are trying to invade the planet through network tv shows would be an example of a delusion while hearing a voice telling you to steal the Declaration of Independence is an AVH. People who are in treatment for their mental illness and have it controlled with therapy and medications may still continue to experience AVHs and delusional thoughts but are often aware that they are symptomatic and have learned to differentiate between reality and their delusions and AVHs as they are happening to a point where you have very well have met someone who has a mental illness with psychotic symptoms of this type and had no idea. Mental illness can be manageable and does not mean that a person is incapable or unreliable. Kyle is not trying to perpetuate stigma, he’s just freaking out. 
> 



	2. The World Is a Scary Place Now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks again to littlecountrymouse and shennanigans for letting me write this at them. also, every single person who reblogged this or left a review. You're the reason why I'm writing this verse. I wasn't going to keep going but you're so encouraging and you ask such great questions and it makes me go "Hey, maybe I should..." and then I do. Comments feed my muse. If I do write more though, it wont be until after the season finale because I want to know where everything stands.

Kyle sleeps sitting up on the couch and dreams of Michael Guerin in a void. He looks the way the Kyle remembers him most intensely in high school, looking like a picture in a blue suit all razor-wire cheekbones and flyaway curls, a perfect replica of the teenage knight ready to throw down over Alex, But his eyes are the eyes of the Michael Kyle met in the Project Shepard bunker, cloudy and tired from years of captivity. Whispers of the lie of Michael claiming he’s fine echoes through the not-there space but he doesn’t repeat his reassurance that Kyle should do whatever he needs to or his defense of Alex. Instead, he grabs by Kyle the front of this shirt like it’s a heated life preserver and he’s about to jump off the Titanic and pleads with a terrible desperation, “Don’t leave me alone with him.”

Kyle comes awake suddenly to the sound of his phone singing at him. He really needs to program a better ringtone for everyone he went to high school with than Low. It’s in poor taste and almost never appropriate for the situation. He just hasn’t had time with his dad and work and now Flo.Rida is going on about boots with the fur when he’s still half unconscious and needs to be serious with his ex-girlfriend who he still likes a little and has to be serious with a lot while his childhood best friend and high school victim is in the other room. And he knows he did it all to himself. “Liz?”

“Yeah, hey, I’m here. Can you come let me in?”

He stumbles to his feet, shoes untied and finds Alex, standing in the doorway, firmly blocking his exit and glaring at him. “I don’t have a way back, asshole. You drove me here.”

Kyle has a terrible vision of himself trapped in an unending Parks and Rec loop from hell with a version of Billy Eichman that could and would happily beat him bloody and holds up both hands in desperation. "And I swear I’ll drive you back to your car after we talk. Let me go let Liz in.”

“Oh yeah, sure. Go let my friend into my home.”

“Alex." Kyle knows he's pleading but whatever, he's tumbled past caring about his dignity and fallen into desperate to get this accomplished and then over with. "Just, hang on one second ok?”

He trips out the door as Liz is getting out of her car and tries to think about every spy movie he’s seen in the last ten years. He really, truly doesn’t know jack shit about this cloak and dagger shit.

Jesse Manes had refused to talk on the phone so he knows phones are risky but he doesn’t know what else is going to be an issue. There have to be other things. He doesn’t know what so he’s just going to do his best with guess work. He powers his phone all the way off and tosses it over Liz’s shoulder as she approaches. 

She frowns at him as it lands in the dirt.

“What are you doing?” 

“Getting rid of my phone.”

“You could just…put it in my car. Or your car. Are you high?”

“That would be so much easier.” Kyle agrees, feeling like an idiot. He really didn’t sleep well and the closer he gets to having to actually saying what he needs to say, the worse his anxiety is getting, creeping down his chest and up his skull from his neck like strangling vines of tension that are making him stupid as well as scared.

“Kyle, you don’t look well.”

“I’m fine. Can you turn off your phone and leave it in your car? I’ll do it too. And then we can talk as we walk back to the house.”

Liz bites her lip, brow furrowed, concerned. Kyle appreciates the concern, and yeah, it’s definitely warranted, but the less ears or possible ears on this, the better. He hopes. He doesn’t actually know how smart technology works unless its attached to a laser scalpel and scope. 

“Sure thing. And you’re going to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“Yeah. Just. Please?”

She nods because she’s still the coolest person he’s ever met. He tries to think about how to word what he’s going to say and ask next as he trots to his phone and picks it up out of the sand. It’s no worse for the wear. He leaves it in the off position and crosses to Liz’s car. He tosses it in her open door and waits as she fiddles with her purse for a solid minute. 

“Do I need anything?”

“If you’ve got any actual paper in case we need to make plans?”

She pulls out a full sized notebook, college-ruled, and a pen, and Kyle wishes he was surprised. She’s always been nerdy and he doesn’t know why he thought she might have changed. Fundamentally, people never do. He wonders if he’s still an asshole deep down or if he what he is, at his core, is a scared little boy. 

Shit. He can’t be thinking like this. Not now. There’s too much at stake.

When the doors are locked with their phones inside, Kyle asks, “Is that thing,” he points to his own chest , “Still there?”

She tenses all over. “Kyle-“

“Just nod or shake your head. Or blink once for yes twice for no. Something.”

She fucking blinks at him. Just once but slowly and meaningfully. Holy shit. In the back of his mind, he was always hoping that he was wrong, that Michael had done something wrong and that there was a reason that Jesse Manes was holding him hostage, maybe something political like eco-terrorism or possibly, because he really was a monstrous threat to humanity. But if Liz was that scared and that reluctant to admit she had a link to someone so that she could hide whoever gave her that handprint, then no, that bullshit about a predatory race that fed on human misery couldn’t be true. 

Fuck. 

_Fuck._

“I need you to trust me with Alex right now. I swear on my dad’s grave, I’m trying to help, so please, Liz, you don’t have to say anything just, when I ask you to show him, just do it, okay?”

She looks at him with those eyes that were the first outside his own family that he ever really loved and sees through him to the weight that his father still holds on him. She knows it better than anyone. Rosa sits on her the same way. There’s no vow more sacred than a grave you wish was never dug. She nods and holds out her hand. He knows it's not romantic and is glad to take it nonetheless. He is glad he’s not alone with this anymore and he thinks maybe she is too.

Alex is waiting when they step inside, his crutch holding him up straight as a rail, his other hand clenched in a fist that’s echoed by the tension is his jaw. His anger fills up the whole room and he is not impressed.

“I’m supposed to be at work but I had to call in because I’m stuck here, thanks you. If you’re here to tell me you’re getting married or something equally stupid, it could have waited until after business hours. Some of us have our own lives.”

“It can't and I can explain, and I will, but first I need to know if you think this cabin is a safe place to talk privately, without being overheard, and I mean by anything.”

“Are you kidding me?” Alex demands, eyes rolling so hard he can practically hear them scraping the back of his skull. “Are you pulling some Ed Snowden shit on me right now?”

Kyle doesn’t say anything, just shrugs. Alex stomps out of the room. When he comes back he looks the same but nods. Kyle doesn’t ask what he’s done Alex is military. If he thinks they’re safe to talk they probably are.

“Okay. Now talk.”

“All right,” Kyle says, and he knows he’s using his doctor voice, the one he used on children and old people and people whose bones are actually sticking out through their skin, “I think you should sit down.”

“And I think you’re mad your dad left this place to me and your history gives you the right to tell me what to do in my house on my land but that needs to stop, right now.”

“It’s not about of that.” Kyle tries, even though yeah, he is kinda hurt about his dad giving this place to Alex, because thats not what this is about. He breaks away from Liz and steps forward, hands open and down, using every body language trick he’s ever been taught. “Our dads were in something bad together. And if you just sit down I can tell you about. Please, man, it’s important.” 

Alex pulls back with an expression of animosity that is a snarl just shy of baring his teeth. “What about my father?”

“He’s…” Kyle looks for the words and fails. This is probably pointless and he’s just realizing it now. After all this. Damnit. “You’re not going to believe me.”

“Try me.”

“You won’t. Please. Let me start at the beginning and don’t stop me until I get the way through this, okay, because I know how nuts this is going to be?”

“Kyle are you sure about this?” Liz asks softly, really asking but he can’t answer her with Alex filling the room and the world the way he is.

Alex smirks, mean like Kyle used to be mean, and waves a hand, “By all means. What’s the beginning?”

Kyle looks back at Liz and she shrugs then nods in tacit permission. Okay. Right. He’s not alone in this and this is going to be news to her too. So he’ll start at the beginning. Yep. He won't sound crazy at all. He feels like he's throwing himself off a cliff when he says, "In 1947, an alien vessel crashed out by Foster Homestead Ranch and our families have been involved in the cover up ever since.” He recites it all exactly the way would give a diagnosis during rounds, concise, clear, and factual but damnit, it came out ridiculous anyway.

Alex stares at him for a long, long beat then snorts. “Yeah. And I used to patrol Santa’s Workshop.”

“I’m serious. Our grandparents, or great-grandparents maybe, but Valentis and Maneses, were out there that night, and your dad is still involved. My dad was too." Isn't that a bitch to think about, wondering what his dad was doing with Manes when he was growing up and even more recently, if knew and how much and what he might have tried to done. "I don’t know what his part in all this was to be honest but when he was dying he would repeat a lot of things, pain and delusional states can cause echolalia. But one thing he got caught on was ‘If you see the handprint, go to Manes.’ And when I saw it, your dad turned out to be in charge of his own private Area 51.”

Liz is staring at him now. “You talked to Staff Sergeant Manes?”

”Yeah.”

“What did he fucking say when you talked to him?” Alex demands, leaning in, somehow bigger than his average frame should allow him to be. 

“Have you met the guy? He likes to do the talking.” That gets him an approving and disgusted little nod from Alex so he keeps going. “Once I told him I’d seen an handprint, he wouldn’t shut up and made sure to give me the full tour of his own personal Red Level conspiracy bunker. It was,” he tries to find the words. He tries to figure out how to explain this to Alex that won’t get him hit. “Bad, like war crime bad.”

“Ri-ight. Aliens but war crime bad. Ok. Why’d you lie in the first place?” Alex is back to sceptical which Kyle understands. He would be if he weren’t the one who had seen and heard all the evidence. 

And then, because not all heroes wear capes, Liz pulls her shirt down and across exposing the strange technicolor ripple of the handprint on her skin. It’s even more clearly alien on her skin. “He didn’t.” 

Alex reaches out and Liz holds still as his fingers stroke over it. It moves and writhes and ripples and readjusts. She holds her breath as he explores it with his fingertips and when he finally pulls his hand away. Then he sits with a heavy thump on the couch and curses, shaking his head.

“Fucking aliens.” Alex shakes his head. 

“Yeah,” Liz agrees. “More than you know. It’s not my place to tell you though.”

Alex drops his crutch to the couch beside him and rubs the back of his neck. “Jesus. The Roswell aliens are real. Of course. That’s just perfect.”

“Alex, your dad called it Project Shepherd. I don’t know any of the specifics but he took me down into this bunker to see it yesterday and looked pretty official, lots of screens and official documents and really shady pictures of really ugly things, but, listen,” he sits down on the couch next to Alex because this is going to suck. This going to be the worst thing he’s ever done, maybe, and he’s told people their children, spouses, parents, and siblings were going to die or dead. Fuck. He doesn’t want do this.He has to though. It may be the only good thing he’ll ever do for Alex Manes and absolutely what he must do for Michael Guerin. “Listen, your dad has what he calls a live specimen down there.”

“Oh god. Kyle.” When Liz says his name, its on a winded breath that sounds punched out of her. 

When he looks up, two pairs of big eyes are staring at him. It’s both harder and easier knowing they’re pinning him like this but he can’t look at them and looks back down at the floor, at Alex’s feet beside his own, one with toes, the other prosthetic.

“He meant an alien he’s been keeping prisoner for god he dragged out for me to to help him gather data on.” He finishes, like this is confession and telling them is going to unburden his soul. He wants to tell them more, what he did, what he saw but keeping that confidence is part of the point.

He looks up, into her face, and he realizes that she knows what he’s going to say next. He should have known she’d figure it out because he’s only getting it just now. She’s so much smarter than he is. He can’t believe how long it took him to put this together, what happened, where she got the damn handprint, because of course, _of course_ , the other aliens have to be the Evans twins. The story of how the Evans twins and Michael Guerin came to be found on the side of the road in the desert is a town legend almost as well known as Roswell crash. The three of them were a single entity that moved with one purpose back in the day and now that he thinks about it, Kyle remembers the way Max Evans used to stare at Liz when they were in school, the way Isabel had come to the hospital the day Michael Guerin has been declared dead and convinced him to come help her set his brother’s hand after he wrecked it punching holes drywall in a fit of grief-driven rage. There can’t be anyone else and Liz must have realized it too.

The only person in the room without all the pieces is the one person who really needs them and there’s no easy way around it. Kyle has to spit out or it’ll sit there in his throat, rotting his soul until he dies the death of a man who could have been good but isn’t.

“Where are you telling me this Kyle?”

“Because when I became a doctor I took an oath,” Kyle says. Despite all his best efforts, he can feeling tears sting his eyes as the smell of Michael Guerin’s bile on the floor by his pale bare feet hits him in phantom waves and knows that there are pieces of him that are left behind in that puddle of puke with that he can’t have back until he finishes this. “When I graduated medical school, made promises to my work and myself. I promised that I’d dedicate my life to the service of life and that the health and well-being of my patient would come first, that I’d respect the autonomy and dignity of my patient, that I wouldn’t let _any_ consideration factor into my treatment of my patient, that the confidentiality of my patients are sacred even after death and that I wouldn’t let my medical knowledge violate anyone’s human rights and your dad wants to make me break all of those promises to do…I don’t even know what. And I can’t. I just can’t. ”

Neither of them say a thing as he breathes haggardly and rubs his face He licks his lips, swallows, and turns to meet Alex’s soft, patient, far-too-understanding but not-at-all excusing gaze and says, “And because it’s Michael Guerin,” each word forced out over abject terror and crushing guilt. “And I’m pretty sure he’s always had him.”

Kyle is expecting to be hit for that. Or called a liar. Or be screamed at. Or anything. 

What he is not expecting is for Alex to crumple in on himself like a crushed piece of paper in an angry fist. It happens all at once, the way Alex laces his fingers in front of his open mouth, bends at the waist so his forehead hits his knees, and gasps like all the air has been sucked from the room is a lot of movement but watching, it appears instant. The noise he makes is a wail. Kyle knows because he’s heard it before, in waiting rooms and ERs and ICUs and hospices and from his mother when his father died. It’s the sound of the world rearranging to make space for someone’s new, uglier reality. Love makes that sound, primal and untethered, and it scares Kyle more than anger ever could. 

He doesn’t touch Alex this time, Trauma Informed Care 101, but he does put his hand down a centimeter away from Alex, palm upturned, in case he wants it. He does it because he wouldn’t want to be alone in his body with that much feeling. He doesn’t expect it to be accepted but Alex grabs his arm, fingers digging in so hard he’ll bruise as Kyle takes that as an invitation and leans in enough that he can wrap his other arm around Alex.

That does it. It’s like Alex hasn’t been held in ten years or something because he sags into the hug and breaks, letting out hiccupping sobs onto Kyle’s shoulder and bare arm in the most awkward embrace of his life. He chokes out words that mostly sound like “fuck” and “Guerin” and Kyle holds him like never would have been brave enough to even two days ago. But two days ago, Michael Guerin was dead, aliens weren’t real and Alex Manes wouldn’t have let Kyle come near him, let alone comfort him.

Nothing Kyle done has feels like it has mattered this much in his whole life. Nothing, and h'es held loose organs in his hands and put them back where they belong. So Kyle rubs Alex’s back with his palm the way his dad used to when he had nightmares and mumbles _Tranquilo, hermano, tranquilo. Encargaremos de eso pronto._ hoping his assurances come off half as comforting as his old man’s. 

When he looks at Liz over his head, she’s gone. He’s sure she’s still in the cabin but she’s made herself scarce. Maybe that’s for the best. Some things shouldn’t have an audience. Alex’s radical breakdown doesn’t need witnesses. It’s bad enough he’s hear to see it but their stories are too tightly tied together for it to be avoided.

“We’re going to get him out of there,” Kyle vows because they are. He doesn’t care if they have to murder Jesse Manes, Michael Guerin is not staying in that place. He won’t allow it. He’s not going to be the villain of this piece. He spent enough time in that roll over small things, he won’t be the bad guy on a cosmic scale. He won’t.

“He’s alive,” Alex whispers, not lifting his head. “When I woke up this morning he was dead but now he’s not. For years I thought- I didn’t- But he’s fucking _alive_.” He laughs and it sounds a lot like crying. “Guerin’s alive.”

“Yeah. So, next steps are probably open box, remove cat. That's what why I had to tell you and Liz. I can’t call the police on the government. I thought about it and it just doesn't work but I don’t know what to do.”

Alex chokes out a strangled laugh at that and then he's crying again, his fingernails digging into Kyle's shirt and Kyle hugs him awkwardly and maybe a little tighter than he probably should but fuck, he missed him. And Kyle does know that it's selfish to have missed Alex so much when he was the one who threw their friendship away in the first place. He is also totally aware that it's incredibly self-serving to be so glad that he has the opportunity to have any kind of redemption now when it's at the cost of Alex's peace of mind and Michael's very existence but he's grateful anyway. He never feels more whole than when he's caring for someone else and he hates that he didn't really figure that out until after he left Roswell. He could have avoided hurting so many people, but no one more than Alex, if he just let himself be this person sooner. 

He's not sure what difference that would make, if he would still be sitting where he is now or if circumstances might have left the pieces scattered differently but what he knows is that this is where he's landed and this is what he needs to unfuck. There's one man in a cage underground in the dark and another crying in his arms and he needs to fix both those things before he'll be able to live with himself and all Kyle can do is not get this one thing right, this one time, please Christ, let him get this one thing right, just this once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note 
>   * So I looked it up and the Hippocratic Oath and of the 120~ med schools in the US, about half. It's good. However, it's missing a bunch of key principles that I think are REALLY important to the practice of medicine about how people should be treated including discrimination and respect for human rights. The Nuremberg Code which was developed in the wake of trials on Nazi doctors is supposed to be a supplement to the Hippocratic Oath to account for human experimentation but I don't really feel like having 2 separate pieces of paper to cover your ass is sufficient. The promises you make on a doctor should cover it and the Hippocratic Oath frankly, doesn't. The other schools use different oaths with a majority of them are using a modified version of a pledge called of the Declaration of Geneva which was created at around the same time as the Geneva Contention in response to the medical experimentation conducted by the Japanese and Nazi doctors on their prisoners. A lot of sentiment is similar but I read through a lot and based on what Kyle said about his practice experience in Barely Breathing, it sounds more like he's living by the Declaration of Geneva rather than the Hippocratic Oath because it does cover human rights and non-discriminatory practices.
>   * I have been told by friends with crypto skills that the only way cell phones are actually safe is to have them powered off and physically away from you. I figure Alex the Codebreaker might have other things he can do.
>   * [She drove me here!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDRSnSoQfGQ)
>   * Tranquilo, hermano, tranquilo. Encargaremos de eso pronto. = Easy, bro, easy. We'e going to fix this soon. 
> 


**Author's Note:**

> * The story and subsequent chapter titles come from Down With The Sickness by Disturbed which contains lyrics which graphically depict a scene of child abuse. 


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